


such a sad love (deep in your eyes)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 09:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11689032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Phil's hoping for good news.





	such a sad love (deep in your eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from David Bowie's "As the World Falls Down."

Phil’s hoping for good news when Simmons asks him to come down to the lab. She sounded lighter—not happy, but definitely less heartsick than she did an hour ago when he promised her they’d do everything in their power to bring Ward home. And she looks it too; when he walks through the lab doors she greets him with that breathless excitement that means she’s made a breakthrough.

Which is odd on two counts, both he takes notice of while she babbles a preamble to her news (something about not being able to explain in full at the moment). One: Simmons isn’t working on anything. She’s helping Fitz on the broken collar where she can and keeping an eye on Skye. Two: Fitz isn’t showing even a fraction of her excitement. That could be down to the mounting tension between the two of them—something’s happened recently to cause strain between SHIELD’s infamous science duo, but Phil missed whatever it was in his worry over Skye and her exposure to the GH-325—but while Fitz might not care about Ward quite as much as Simmons (but then no one on the Bus does), he does still care. If they’d found a way to help him, he should be happy about it.

And then there’s surprise reason number three, appearing over Simmons’ shoulder just as she gets to the point of her call: Skye is out of bed when Simmons has spent the last three weeks adamant that she remain in it. The reason why—that Simmons doesn’t know at all—becomes apparent when Skye levels one of Fitz’s new generation of ICERs at them.

The nonlethal component makes no difference, Phil acts on instinct when he sees the shape of a pistol in her hands. He grabs Simmons, pulls her to him, twists so he’ll take the impact. Only he’s too slow. Blue light flares in his vision and Simmons goes limp in his arms. He drops her to the ground, letting his knee ease her way down while he grabs his sidearm.

“Fitz,” he says tersely, keeping Skye pinned, “come to me. Slowly.”

For the first time—outside of being in the middle of an epiphany or breaking a quarantine to save his best friend’s life—Fitz blatantly ignores an order. He remains at his work bench and looks to Skye with something like resignation. “So we’re doing this? Now?”

“As good a time as any,” Skye says tersely while tossing her ICER out the lab’s back door and hitting the button to shut it. Not exactly conventional but she’s probably not in any shape to bend over and slide it across the floor to Phil to prove her good will—and even though she just shot Simmons (with a nonlethal round, he reminds himself to stave off the bone-crushing guilt) he does still care enough about her health to be glad she thought ahead. “Besides,” she adds while easing her way closer. Now she’s out of the shadows he can see she’s got her laptop clutched to her chest. “We both know Simmons was gonna screw it up. Better we tell him and then there’s less drama about it.”

Fitz bobs his head like that makes perfect sense while Phil stares at them both in horror.

“Shooting Simmons is ‘less drama’?” he asks.

“I promise I had a _really_ good reason,” Skye says, her voice a little too thin. Just this morning she was telling him about the color in her cheeks and how she should definitely be allowed to help go after Lorelei, now she’s almost as pale as her bleach white t-shirt. She sits the second she reaches a stool and sets the laptop on Simmons’ workstation.

“I’m not hearing a reason,” he says while she types.

“Simmons is a traitor,” Fitz says calmly, moving to join Skye. Or more likely to keep her upright. His hand is pretty firm at her back and he doesn’t look like he’s much help aside from that.

“May?” Skye asks, using the Bus’s internal comms system. “I’m sending you some coordinates. Ward was there in the last five minutes.”

Phil hesitates on the verge of belaying his earlier order that May take them to any leads Skye’s digging turned up. He hasn’t thought it of her in months but – this could be some sort of Rising Tide trick. But at the same time Ward is currently missing and brainwashed. Can they really pass up a lead that might help him?

He lowers his gun so it’s pointed at the floor instead of the kids. “You have until we land.” He’s peripherally aware of Simmons, splayed out beside him like a dropped doll. If he has to lock these two in the lab, he won’t be able to do it without leaving her behind.

Skye and Fitz exchange a look. She goes back to typing while he speaks up. “You remember the glasses we made to recreate the effect of Amador’s eye?”

He nods. That mission is one of those that still visits him when his dreams are particularly restless.

“They broke almost right after the mission-”

“ _Simmons_ broke them,” Skye mutters.

“Yeah,” Fitz allows. “She was wiping down the counters while I was tweaking the circuitry and ‘accidentally’ sprayed the glasses with the cleaning solution. At the time I thought it was an accident.” He looks forlornly to Simmons on the floor. “There were other things going on after that, other missions, and I didn’t get back to them until after- after we rescued you.”

All the kids get a little twitchy at the mention of the time he spent in captivity. They’re getting more comfortable with field work, but no one’s ever ready to be tortured and the reminder that it’s always a possibility doesn’t sit well with any of them.

“We were gonna use them to hustle Ward at cards,” Skye picks up. “Only when I put on the glasses and looked into the lounge, this is what the backscatter picked up.” She turns her laptop, showing him a black and white x-ray image that it takes Phil a minute to decipher. He makes out the contours of the lounge first—the chairs and tables and the curve of the ceiling becoming the wall—and it’s only when the camera—the glasses, he supposes—move sideways that he can see the confusing mess of static in the middle is two bodies lined up. Fitz is shorter, sitting in the foreground. And Ward’s facing him, his jaw set in a grim line while he contemplates his two pair with what Phil recognizes immediately as a cybernetic eye.

The video cuts out after that, going all roller coaster like Skye threw the glasses off.

“We have other images,” she says softly. She brings them up, and Phil takes them in, each adding to the well of fear and guilt and disgust opening up in his gut.

“Simmons,” he manages after about ten of the images. It’s half a question, half a plea that it not be true.

“No,” Fitz says while Skye pulls up a grid of five different images at once. It takes him a second, but he can ID each of the other members of the team. All of them are clean.

He swallows thickly. “Then why do you think she’s a ‘traitor’?” She’s in love with Ward—involved with him despite Ward’s day one promise that their history wouldn’t repeat itself—but that doesn’t mean she knows he’s got one of those eyes.

“We didn’t,” Skye says after another exchanged look between the two, “until a couple weeks ago.”

“Simmons was wearing the glasses in Italy,” Fitz says. “I didn’t tell her, but I thought it would be a good idea if we had video of everything that happened out there. I was going through the footage afterward when I saw this.” He gestures and Skye pulls up another video, this one without the x-ray filter.

There’s no sound, but Phil can read Ward’s lips, the earnest _don’t come out until I come for you_. He feels like a voyeur, seeing the fearful expression Ward meant only for Simmons. And then he feels sick when the camera—when Simmons—leans in for a kiss and he sees her hand come up ahead of her, covering Ward’s left eye.

“There’s more,” Skye says, turning the laptop back but not making any move to show him. “I went through the Bus’s archives and every time Simmons kisses Ward, she covers his left eye first. The only reason to do that-”

“Is if she knows there’s someone other than Ward watching,” Phil finishes. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. There are a million thoughts in his head, a million little details about the last few months coming into sharper focus. He’s got questions, more than a few of them, and a very short time to get them answered. But he can’t help himself taking another look at Simmons. She doesn’t have an implant and yet she knows about Ward’s. He wouldn’t think her capable of that kind of deception but-

“She’s not in control,” Skye says softly, breaking into his thoughts. She smiles a sad little smile. “We weren’t sure, since she doesn’t have a kill switch, but-” she taps the keyboard, bringing up a screen of text.

“I put a bug in her phone once we realized she knew,” Fitz says.

“These are all the texts she’s sent and received since we heard Ward was captured.”

Phil bends over her to skim the exchange. Simmons goes from an urgent _where is he???_ to a reasonable _it’ll be more trouble for all of us if this goes on any longer than necessary_ to a demanding _tell me THIS INSTANT_ in under ten back-and-forths. After that there’s a five minute lull followed by a set of coordinates dated the same minute Simmons called him down here.

Even though her fear is palpable in the words, Phil feels relief. Simmons isn’t pulling Ward’s strings. Which means someone out there is pulling both of theirs.

“She told us,” he says as that particular piece falls into place.

“What?” Fitz asks.

“After Amador’s hearing,” he says, remembering that day outside the Triskelion.

They were loitering around after giving their testimonies about Akela’s actions, talking about how it might go, and naturally the conversation turned to the horrors of living like that, how many others might be trapped the way Akela was.

“It couldn’t go on forever,” Simmons said. Her voice was light but she had her arms wrapped around herself and was standing a little closer to Ward than she’d usually let herself in the presence of a superior. “You need at least two people for every one with an implant so that they could be monitored at all times.”

“The number would grow exponentially with every link in the chain,” Fitz added in. “That’s hundreds of people for just a handful of assets in the field.”

“Eventually you’d need some other way of controlling them. Other lives to threaten perhaps.”

“Other lives?” May asked.

Simmons shrugged, almost seeming careless with her theorizing, but looking back Phil realizes there was tension there. He wrote it off as the drama of Akela’s fate hanging in the balance; it never occurred to him it might have something to do with Simmons herself. “Other people,” she suggested, almost casually, “friends, family, loved ones. That’s assuming you can’t simply find suitably amoral individuals willing to do the work for the right price.”

Phil sincerely doubts Simmons is in the latter camp.

“Her parents?” Fitz asks.

“Why?” Skye asks. “They’ve got Ward and she’s totally gone on him.” She’s right. Even in the earliest days of the team it was clear whatever had happened between Ward and Simmons during their mutual assignment to the Cube was far from the careless fling the psych evals indicated. It’s been kind of adorable watching the two of them try to pretend they’re not in love.

Of course now that attitude takes on an entirely new and disquieting meaning.

Skye gestures to the screen. “That’s probably why they gave her the coordinates. They can’t cut their losses with him without losing her too, and since she’s been going all vampire on me lately-”

“What?” Phil asks.

“Simmons has been taking samples of Skye’s blood,” Fitz says. “She _says_ it’s to study the GH-325’s potential side effects-”

“And it probably is,” Phil sighs. Just not for Skye’s benefit. She’s probably sending daily status updates to the Clairvoyant. Hell, she can send him _hourly_ updates with Ward constantly transmitting. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “What does May know?” If they were gonna tell anyone before him, it would’ve been her.

Fitz and Skye exchange another of those looks. They’ve been doing that for months but as it was so often behind Ward’s back, he assumed it was to do with teasing him. He’s overlooked a lot of things with this team. Even the guilt over that can’t outweigh his pride in them—all of them. Fitz and Skye for figuring it out. Ward and Simmons for just surviving.

“Um, about May…,” Skye says. Phil doesn’t like her pitying expression one bit.

“We’re about 80% sure she’s not working for the Clairvoyant,” Fitz says.

“Eighty-five,” Skye amends.

Phil leans a hip against the lab bench. The Bus is beginning to land and May’ll be down the second they’re secure. “Make it fast.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s nearly three in the morning and Luke Skywalker’s just coming home to find his family killed by the Empire. Things have settled down since the movie started—there was a lot of joking that Skye should, when she becomes an agent, take the last name Walker—but the kids are all into it now, too tired from their long day of fighting an alien sorceress to keep up the running commentary that so often fills movie nights.

Ward’s back, free of alien influence if not the human kind, and after the day he’s had no one’s saying word one about Simmons cuddling up next to him on the couch. She’s been convinced she fainted in the lab due to overexertion and, after promising a concerned Ward she’d take better care of herself, is already half asleep with her head in his lap.

Skye’s laying across one of the armchairs, Fitz on the floor next to her so she doesn’t have to reach for anything she wants from the coffee table piled with snacks.

And May’s still here, sitting across from Skye and Fitz. There was a minute on the drive back from the Bifrost site, just the two of them in the van, when Phil seriously considered taking her offer to leave. He’s wondered ever since if he should’ve made her go—she’s been spying on _all_ of them, lying to him in particular—but when he steps up behind the couch and the sound from the TV drops low, he knows it was the right call letting her stay. He needs someone at his back who knows him that well for what’s ahead.

In the dark he wraps a hand around Ward’s right shoulder. “Don’t move,” he says, pitching the order to all of them. “Keep your eyes on the movie.”

Skye flinches but scowls and shifts in her seat. Fitz drags one of the pillows out from behind her and hits her with it to get her to stop. To anyone watching, it looks like her stitches were bothering her.

Simmons stiffens, but Ward slides his hand down her spine. She could just be bothered by the sad scene playing out.

“We know,” Phil says. “About your eye.”

Simmons emits a faint note of distress.

Phil squeezes Ward’s shoulder. “Is that it? Or do they have more they’re controlling you both with?”

“That’s it,” Ward says, his voice rough after a brief hesitation. “One kill switch, two people.” His tone says precisely how he feels about that. Simmons drags herself up, nestles herself beneath his arm.

“Good,” Phil says. He squeezes Ward’s shoulder. “We’ve beaten that before.”

Simmons sighs sadly. “You don’t understand,” she says to Ward’s lap.

“It’s not just the eye and the Clairvoyant,” Ward says. “I was in a SHIELD trauma facility when I first woke up with this. It’s SHIELD docs hiding the real x-rays.” He pulls Simmons a little tighter against him so she’s practically laying across his chest. “It was SHIELD that put us together. This thing is inside, it has its tentacles everywhere.”

Well that’s a little more dire than Phil was hoping for. Still, he smiles in the dark. “Then we’ll root it out wherever it is. We’ll find a way to save you, Grant.” He gives one last squeeze and then backs off, coming around from behind May’s chair like he just came from his office.

He stands at the edge of the sitting area, watching the movie now the sound’s back up. After a few minutes he takes a look around, sees Fitz’s fingers twined with Skye’s against his chest where Ward can’t see. Not that Ward’s looking, he’s still looking determinedly at the screen like he’s never seen Star Wars before. Simmons has got her head tucked up under his chin and tears are streaming down her face while he holds her close.

“Thank you,” he says gruffly.

Phil doesn’t answer, not while he’s in sight of the eye, but he makes a silent promise that he’ll earn that thanks. The Clairvoyant, SHIELD, the whole damn world, it doesn’t matter. He won’t lose anyone else to this.

 


End file.
